A different kind of NaNoWriMo

By Gemma Storey

I’m a bad NaNoWriMo’er.

I love NaNoWriMo. It can be a lot of fun, encourage people to write, and provide writers with a sense of community that they don’t usually get. But, this year is different for me. I’ve spent the year working on the mechanics of my stories, and doing a lot of reading about writing.

When I started to write notes for the third book, which continued the story told in the first two books, it felt different. This is what I want to work on now, but I don’t want to rush it. I’m enjoying making detailed scene notes and spending time considering where the story needs to go, rather than worrying about hitting a word count.

This year’s NaNoWriMo is different for me. I’m not going to worry about getting to 50k (although, the way things are going I might end up with 50,000 words of notes). I know I can do that, and more, in a month. What I am going to do is work on the book every day, and plan it out a much as possible before I continue the first draft.

Restructuring and rewriting has been a huge pain this year, but it’s also very rewarding. I think it’s helped change the way I approach writing. The philosophy of ‘write whatever comes into your head and fix it later’ is liberating, and helps you prove to yourself that you do have a story to tell. Yet if you want to publish anything, it’s going to require a lot of reworking, and I’m ready to change my game plan.

The Creative Process 1. This is awesome 2. This is tricky 3. This is shit 4. I am shit 5. This might be ok 6. This is awesome

A different challenge

I like the idea of challenging myself to do 100k in 100 days. Of course, it sounds less intense than NaNoWriMo. The word count is easy to achieve, or is it? It’s not hard to focus the majority of your writing around November, and then spend the rest of the year faffing around not really doing much creative writing at all.

The 100 days challenge could help get into the habit of writing every day, while giving me the time to plan properly and consider what you are doing. As much as I love NaNoWriMo, I think I need this more consistent approach to get me to the next level.